


I Made You Cry, When I Walked Away

by PigSlay



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, I tagged it as M/M but a lot of it is Other bc they're rebuilding their friendship most of all, M/M, Trust Issues, but with a good ending I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 12:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7316095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PigSlay/pseuds/PigSlay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from tumblr: #10 - Boat stopped running while in the middle of the lake</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Made You Cry, When I Walked Away

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know One Direction.
> 
> Also this is the post the prompt came from: http://anna-wa.tumblr.com/post/146534765259/15-days-of-writing-pt-7-summer

_If you can spare an hour or so we’ll go for lunch down by the ~~river~~  lake…._

Zayn should have known this would happen. He never wanted to go on this ridiculous boat ride anyway. But somehow Liam and his parents had convinced him to do it, to go on a boat ride with Louis and talk things through, alone.

Now he’s five seconds away from either pushing Louis in the ocean or letting Louis push him in the ocean. At least he has a life jacket on…

“Zayn are you even listening to me?!” Louis yells.

“Yes, yes, I am listening…” Zayn answers half-heartedly. “I ruined everything and you’ll never forgive me for leaving the band in the middle of the tour, blah blah blah. Nothing I haven’t already heard…”

“And you have nothing to say to defend yourself?” Louis questions. “Well, at least you admit you’re a traitor…”

“What’s the point in defending myself?” Zayn asks right back. “You’ve clearly already made up your mind about how you feel about me. Nothing I say is going to make a difference…”

“Well, I guess we’re done here then.” Louis starts trying to turn the boat back around. Zayn’s fine with that honestly; he’s gotten quite bored of hearing all the things he does wrong at this point…

“What the heck?” Louis demands, trying to move the wheel but failing. “Why isn’t this thing working?”

“What, did you already forget how to drive a boat? Here, let me.” When Zayn tries though, he has just as many difficulties. The wheel isn’t budging. “…You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Bet you feel real dumb for making fun of me now huh?”

Zayn just rolls his eyes. “Do you have a phone number for the people in charge of these or something?”

“Well… no, not really,” Louis admits, his cheeks slightly red. “They gave them out at the beginning of the tutorial but I didn’t think I’d need it.”

Zayn sighs. Typical Louis. “Alright, grab my hand.”

“What?!” Louis objects. “Why would I want to touch that nasty thing?”

Zayn thinks calling his hand ‘nasty’ is a bit of an overreaction. “Listen, Louis. I have a life jacket. I can keep the two of us afloat. And you know how to swim. The two of us can work together to get back to shore-”

“No, no. Absolutely not. I couldn’t even trust you not to leave the band. How am I supposed to trust you to not kill me or something?”

Zayn bites his lip. This boy is really testing his patience. “ _Listen Louis_.” He raises his voice a bit too loud without realizing it. “It’s either we suck it up and try to get back to shore together, or we’re stuck out here in the middle of the lake waiting for someone else to come and see us, and that could take hours for all we know. Please. I don’t want to be here any longer than you do, so just. Trust me for the next five minutes? Then you can go back to hating me…”

Louis thinks about it for a minute. His face is slightly angry, probably because he doesn’t want to have to do this, but eventually his face falls and he gives up. “Fine. Five minutes.” 

He grabs his hand, and Zayn fights to ignore the butterflies in his stomach. _Louis hates you_ , he reminds himself. He says a silent prayer to Allah that they make it to the surface. Taking a deep breath and counting to three, the two boys jump in.

At first Zayn is extremely frightened, not sure this is going to work after all, but the two of them eventually fall into a rhythm thankfully, and both of them work together to get to the surface.

The water is extremely cold and Zayn screams a tiny bit when he feels something grabbing his foot. He screams louder when he doesn’t see Louis next to him anymore. One second later though, Louis rises to the top of the water again, laughing.

“Got’cha!” Louis giggles, waving his hand to point out it was his hand that grabbed Zayn’s foot like that.

“You b****!” Zayn yells, forcefully grabbing the other boy’s hand again. “I could’ve died or something from you doing that!”

“Come on Zayn, you were wearing a life vest, I knew you wouldn’t die.” Louis defends himself. “Besides, like you said, we need each other to get to the surface. Let’s keep going.”

 _That was actually… a really nice thing to say_ , Zayn thinks to himself. He shakes it off though. He can’t get attached to that; Louis still hates him, Louis still hates him…

As they get closer and closer to the shore, Zayn starts sighing with relief and relaxing his body.

“What, were you scared we wouldn’t make it?” Louis asks.

“Yeah, kind of…” That’s an understatement, Zayn knows. A big one. He was extremely terrified they wouldn’t make it. “Kind of thought you’d swim away from me at some point and it would take me hours to attempt to get here…”

“Now, why would I do that?”

“Because you hate me…”

“Zayn, it’s like Liam said,” Louis starts. “The two of us have too much history together. I could never let you die out here because of me.”

Zayn isn’t sure what to make of that quote, so he just nods and continues forward on autopilot.

Finally they reach the shore. As they carefully climb out, getting rocks and dirt all over themselves, Zayn immediately notices how  _cold_  it is. He thought it was cold in the lake, but oh my gosh. It’s colder than an iced bath or something. 

As soon as he sees his towel, he sprints towards it, taking off his life jacket and practically burying himself in the towel. “Oh my goshhh. Who allowed it to be this cold?!”

He vaguely thinks he overhears Louis telling the people in charge of the service about their boat getting stuck in the middle of the lake, but all he can focus on suddenly is his towel and how soft it is and how cold it is - though the more he dries off the less cold it gets.

He sits up for a moment though to thank Allah for getting them to shore safely, and promises to wash himself as soon as he gets home.

As soon as he’s done praying, Louis appears in front of him. Unsure of what to make of his expression, Zayn decides the best thing to do is just avoid eye contact. He’s probably just over here because he left his stuff nearby or something.

But then, Louis starts talking to him. Calmly, which is a surprise…

“Did you have fun?” he asks.

“Oh yeah, having my ex-best friend yell at me about putting my health first is always a good time…”

“You know, you keep saying that, ‘putting your health first’ and acting like the rest of us aren’t suffering too.” There it is. Zayn knew Louis’ calm exterior was too good to last long… “You think you’re the only one this job has exhausted? It’s exhausted all of us, Zayn. But unlike you, the rest of us stuck around until the break. The rest of us stuck around until after the fifth album was out. I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU HAD TO LEAVE ME! WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?”

Zayn turns around, shocked and speechless. Louis’ face is about the same. “I mean… us. I… I don’t understand why you had to leave us…” Now he’s the one avoiding eye contact and staring at the grass below.

Zayn moves closer - slowly, as to not scare him off hopefully… “Louis, is that what this is about? Do you think I don’t love you?”

“I don’t know Zayn. One day you’re here, the next day you’re gone. And you don’t even say goodbye. You’re just like ‘let’s leave’. That’s it.” Louis has tears forming in his eyes. “But this seems to be a pattern that lots of people in my life do to me. They don’t love me enough to stick around. And then several years later they try to come crawling back because I have something they want now.”

“Louis… Listen to me.” Zayn’s about to start sobbing himself from listening to this, but he tries to stay strong. “I love you. And I’m not saying that because you have something I want, or anything like that. I’m saying that because I love you. I never stopped loving you. I didn’t want to do this boat thing because I didn’t want to force you to forgive me. That’s not what I want. But…”

Zayn chokes back tears. “I miss you. A lot. And I want my partner in crime back in my life. I’m sorry I couldn’t wait until the break. I tried my best. I really did. But I just couldn’t do it. The fame had taken a toll on me, and I couldn’t handle it anymore. I needed to rest. But I’ve never stopped loving you. Not once. Not when you were yelling at me, not when you were making fun of me on Twitter. None of that matters.”

Louis looks up at him now, his blue eyes hypnotizing in the light of the sun. “Do you really mean that?”

“Yes. Every word.”

Louis pulls him in for a hug and wow, Zayn wasn’t expecting that at all. He swallows his shock though and hugs back tight.

“I don’t think I’m ready to forgive you yet,” Louis admits when he pulls back. Zayn nods; it hurts to hear that, but it’s understandable. “But I am ready to start talking to you again.” A pause. “Let me plug my new number into your phone, is that okay?”

Zayn smiles and hands Louis his phone. They stay there for a little bit longer before going home. Louis shows Zayn pictures of his baby, Freddie, and Zayn almost falls over from overload of cuteness.

When it’s time for them to say goodbye, Zayn just tells Louis “thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he responds, then does the one thing Zayn was expecting least of all - gives him a quick kiss on the lips. Not very long, and no tongue or anything like that, but it still leaves Zayn feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

Louis pulls away and gives him one last sad smile. “I love you too.”


End file.
